Herbert Hoover


Born:
August 10, 1974
Died: October 20, 1964
Political Party: Republican
Term: 1929-1933
Vice-President: Charles Curtis


I believe Herbert Hoover deserves the grade of a C for his efforts as president. I say efforts because I think many of the decisions involving tariff raising, the bonus army and the surplus of food were indirectly affected by a decision Hoover made. During his presidency these things were meant to help the United States prosper, but ultimately they hurt America or American people in the end.

Hoovers goals as president seemed to be for the people in many ways when he was deciding what was best for the country. He wanted to preserve the land for the people of the future, creating national parks like Yellowstone national park. Hoover also wanted to help the farmers during this time who were nowhere near a positive outcome at the time. Creating the Federal Farm board they came up with new machinery for equipment used during farming. The board would then sell the extra crops made by the farmers which would allow the farmers to make a little extra money and get them out of the ditch they were in. This goal ultimately back fired, producing way too much food and eventually having a very low demand for crops when it came time to sell them after production of them happened. His goals were meant to be helpful and beneficial to everyone but many of them would backfire on him and leave the country off worse.

Once the vetoing started to happen during Hoover’s presidency, his relationship with the congress started to go downhill. Before the relief efforts went out and before the economy crashed, Hoovers relationship with congress was a decent one but once again, when the economy went downhill so did Hoovers relationship with congress. Every time Congress would try to propose a relief act to help the economy after the crash, Hoover would end up vetoing many of them. This as you can guess, did not go over very well with the members of Congress. The Congress just wanted to give the people immediate help after the crash had occurred.

One of the negative decisions Hoover made during his presidency would have to be the prohibition law he put in place. Although this law was meant to help the people, his efforts to do so back fired on him once again. The people during this time did not take to the law very well. After putting this into place, negative outcomes came from this. People started to illegally get and drink alcohol anyway, alcohol was all people knew growing up and for Hoover to take that away from them was like trying to take away water for us. Everyone drank and everyone did not like the prohibition laws that Herbert Hoover put in place. His efforts were meant to be positive and to stop the crime rate but those two things did not happen, he just made them worse.

The lasting impression Hoover made was with the Hawley Smoot tariff. Once again, Hoover wanted the raising of the tariffs to boost the economy and help out the United States, but it backfired again. By Hoover raising the tariffs, out foreign traders also rose there tariffs when they found this out. When the foreign traders did this, it hurt the US’s economy a lot. The US eventually went back into more debt and prolonged the depression even more. This was a long effect on the US even after Hoover’s time as president.

In conclusion I believe Hoover deserves a grade of a C for his efforts. Many of his decisions as president were meant to turn out well, but still didn’t. He was a very average president in my eyes. He meant well with all of his actions but didn’t end up helping the country out a great deal. This is why I think Herbert Hoover deserves a C for a grade of his presidency.






http://www.historycentral.com/DEP/Hawley-SmootTariff.html

http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/herberthoover

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1580.html

http://www.historycentral.com/Bio/presidents/hoover.html